My stepdaughter has severe learning difficulties and limited movement down her left hand side. She has always had challenging behaviours which have been exacerbated by hormones during her adolescence. Her behaviours are particularly aggressive and difficult when she has PMT. She has been well looked after for many years by her neurologist Dr Rittey and his team at the Ryegate Centre in Sheffield. Earlier this year Dr Rittey referred her to the gynaecology team at Rotherham General.
When we arrived, we realised that we were part of a 2 hour clinic where everyone arrives at the same time and is then seen on an ad hoc basis. My stepdaughter has little patience at the best of times and becomes bored and testy when she has to wait and cannot be reasoned with about this. We waited 20 minutes and realised that it would be impossible to sit there indefinitely as she was becoming increasingly bored.
I told reception that she was special needs and we therefore could not sit there indefinitely. Reception advised that her referral letter had not mentioned this (although it had come from the Ryegate Centre which deals with special needs children). This was presumably why we were sitting in a normal adult clinic mainly surrounded by pregnant women.
To their credit, they made sure that our appointment then happened very quickly and we therefore encountered no problems with challenging behaviour. However the fact that the system did not flag up her special needs and learning difficulties is somewhat baffling and we feel that changes to ensure this always happens would definitely be beneficial. Patient care should always be about specific individual patient needs.
"Special needs patient's learning difficulties weren't effectively communicated"
About: Rotherham Hospital / Gynaecology Rotherham Hospital Gynaecology Rotherham S60 2UD Sheffield Children's NHS Foundation Trust Sheffield Children's NHS Foundation Trust Sheffield S10 2TH
Posted by Frankly1972 (as ),
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Update posted by Frankly1972 (a relative) 11 years ago
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